Brexit Briefing - July 2021

Christmas Truce 1914

Author Harold B Ronson Copyrightexpired Source Wikimedia Commons

Jane Lambert

On the first Christmas of the Great War, the fighting paused to enable both sides to bury their dead.  At least one football match took place between opposing troops. Luxuries from food parcels were exchanged as well as other simple kindnesses.  The suspension by the Commission of legal proceedings against the British government for alleged breaches of the withdrawal agreement is reminiscent of that truce.  There has even been a football match with Germany which England conveniently won.

The Christmas truce of 1914 did not last long and there is no reason to believe that the slightly improved relationship between the UK and its neighbours will last any longer.  There have certainly been enough provocations from the British media from exaggerated indignation over the announcement of visa waiver fees to visit Schengen countries to David Gauke's article Dominic Cummings’s solution to the Irish border problem would have been disastrous on 29 July 2921 in The New Statesman alleging a plot to drive the Irish Republic out of the European Union or at least out of the single market.  

From a brexiteer perspective, such a plot is not as mad as it sounds. It would have avoided customs checks in the Irish sea and on the island of Ireland.  It might even have worked.  There has been a lot of ill-feeling between Britain and Ireland over the centuries but the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic share a common travel area, a common language, the common law, a parliamentary system of government, close economic ties and even closer family ones.  Relations between Dublin and Brussels have been strained over Irish tax incentives to attract US tech companies and they may become strained again if the recent consensus on taxation is ever implemented.  It is not entirely fanciful to suppose that a time may come when the peoples of the UK and Ireland may find that they have more in common with each other than they do with the Continent and that they have more to gain from cooperating with each other than with their continental neighbours.

The suspension of legal proceedings has been viewed by some as a sign of weakness on the part of the EU. It is said that the Commission has been spooked by the threat in Northern Ireland Protocol: the way forward to invoke art 16 of the Northern Irish Protocol. I have to say that I do not think that is very likely. As I explained in British Proposals for Renegotiating the Northern Ireland Protocol on 29 July 2021, art 16 is intended only to bring short term relief should the application of this Protocol lead to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.  It can be compared to a force majeure clause in a commercial contract.  A more likely explanation for the suspension of legal proceedings is that civil servants on both sides like to take their family holidays in August.

In his foreword to Global Britain in a competitive age which I discussed in my article of 19 March 2021, the Prime Minister wrote:

"In 2021 the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the two largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy, will lead a British and allied task group on the UK’s most ambitious global deployment for two decades, visiting the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. She will demonstrate our interoperability with allies and partners – in particular the United States – and our ability to project cutting-edge military power in support of NATO and international maritime security. Her deployment will also help the Government to deepen our diplomatic and prosperity links with allies and partners worldwide."

That task force has now arrived in the Pacific to the irritation of the Chinese government that was to be expected:

"The threat to freedom of navigation could only come from the one who deploys a carrier strike group to the South China Sea half a world away and flexes its naval muscles to heighten the military tension in that region." (Chinese embassy in London quoted by Frank Gardner in China warns UK as carrier strike group approaches 30 July 2021 BBC website)

What was perhaps less expected was its lukewarm reception by the USA.  Katherine Hille reported that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin had suggested that the UK might be more helpful as an ally if it did not focus on Asia.  In a speech at an event in Singapore sponsored by the Institute of Strategic Studies, Mr Austin stressed that military resources were scarce and that the US and its allies had to work out the best way of sharing military burdens. “If for example, we focus a bit more here [in Asia], are there areas that the UK can be more helpful in other parts of the world?” he mused,  Hille opined that Mr Austin's remarks would come as a blow to HM government (see Katherine Hille Britain ‘more helpful’ closer to home than in Asia, says US defence chief 27 July 2021 Financial Times).

In addition to the negotiations to accede to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership which I mentioned in my Brexit Briefing for May 2021, the UK has become a dialogue partner to the Association of South-East Asian States (see the joint press release from the Foreign Office and the Department for International Trade UK becomes Dialogue Partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations 5 Aug 2021). The press release does not state what a "dialogue partner" actually does and it appears that the UK enjoyed that status through its membership of the EU until 31 Dec 2020.

Nevertheless, it is another quiet achievement for the Department for International Trade under Liz Truss, She is the minister who has escaped most of the criticism that has been levelled at the government.  Truss's department seems to be responsible for business with the EU now that the withdrawal and trade and cooperation negotiations are at an end.  It has published useful documents such as its guidance on EU business: data protection and copyright updated 9 July 2021.  Truss campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU in 2016 yet she has become the minister who has come closest to making brexit work. 

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